I was just trying to get a laugh. My own experience using Minolta IIIa with both features, is to use
10% spot reflective when the shot is in the distance and once in a while to use incident if I'm in the same light as the subject and fairly close. The meter allow me to average three readings. I also braket 1 stop. Of course, I only use this method when shooting film. I wouldn't want anyone in the forum from getting upset.:)

A 10% spot-reflective? What is this referring to? I've only ever known 1% to 3% spot.

Reala can easily handle 3.5 stops under and over. I would not get all hot and bothered about manually metering it. Very, very different and critical story if you migrate to transparency.

IGNORE what a digital camera tells you; the metering technology does not permit accurate parallels with e.g. analogue (film) use. Worse still is people relying on the histogram as an indicator of brightness range. Chuck it out, all of it, and learn metering basics first.

10-18-2012, 09:41 PM

Alan Klein

Sorry I meant 10 degree. Here's link to it. You screw off the white incident adapter and screw on the 10 degree reflective attachment. You can also get a 5 degree attachment.

I base my information on tests done by the technical staff of Professional Photographer Magazine with a Minolta Autometer VF done in an article in the last few years, this is also why you can programme the sensitivity of Sekonic L-758 Meters to the actual individual sensor of up to four different digital cameras, because they are all have different responses to light. Watch this , and you will understand.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdyosItw3Mk

Consider also this fact...I happen to have three brands of film cameras, and I get different readings from the meters of each of them pointed at the same 18% grey card. So which would you believe when loaded with a so-called ISO 100 film?! The same issue happens with dSLRs, too. Thge same happens with light meters, too.

We know that the ISO standard equations for incident meters and for reflected meters both have VARIABLE value 'constants', where the manufacturer of the camera/meter gets to choose the value that they use!

10-18-2012, 10:12 PM

Poisson Du Jour

Quote:

Originally Posted by wiltw

Consider also this fact...I happen to have three brands of film cameras, and I get different readings from the meters of each of them pointed at the same 18% grey card.[...]

And why does that happen?

10-19-2012, 06:18 AM

benjiboy

Quote:

Originally Posted by TooManyShots

So, how many stops of light we are talking about here? If the difference has no meaning in a real world situation, I would rather focus on shooting. You can say I am new since I didn't start shooting during the film age. :)

To members of this forum we are still "in the film age". I don't know how many stops because each sensor has it's own response as I explained, and since your question is basically about digital cameras I think Your querys would be better addressed to our sister site DPUG http://www.dpug.org/forums/f38/

10-19-2012, 06:35 AM

benjiboy

Quote:

Originally Posted by wiltw

Consider also this fact...I happen to have three brands of film cameras, and I get different readings from the meters of each of them pointed at the same 18% grey card. So which would you believe when loaded with a so-called ISO 100 film?! The same issue happens with dSLRs, too. Thge same happens with light meters, too.

We know that the ISO standard equations for incident meters and for reflected meters both have VARIABLE value 'constants', where the manufacturer of the camera/meter gets to choose the value that they use!

I basically agree with you from my experience, but since different makes of cameras exposure systems have different parameters in their design it's quite possible to to have some small deviation in their responses when pointed at a Grey Card, I have noticed this myself in my cameras, but I don't find this in practice significant because in isolation each camera gives me correct exposure, and comparing light meter and thermometer readings I find is a very quick way to drive yourself crazy :)

10-19-2012, 10:27 AM

wiltw

Quote:

Originally Posted by Poisson Du Jour

And why does that happen?

Read about this here (it would have been handy to have this summary available --which it wasn't -- 25 years ago, when I first learned about the issue from Ctein!)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_meter

Quote:

"Determination of calibration constants has been largely subjective; ISO 2720:1974 states that

"The constants K (in reflected meter calibration equation) and C (in incident meter calibration equation) shall be chosen by statistical analysis of the results of a large number of tests carried out to determine the acceptability to a large number of observers, of a number of photographs, for which the exposure was known, obtained under various conditions of subject manner and over a range of luminances."

Since each meter manufacturer gets to CHOOSE the actual value of the constant, the fact that meters do not agree with each other is inherent to the ISO calibration standard equation in the Wikipedia article! And the wording of the above paragraph in the ISO standard will allow you to see that exposure meters offer a GUIDE TO EXPOSURE.

10-19-2012, 10:31 AM

wiltw

Quote:

Originally Posted by benjiboy

I basically agree with you from my experience, but since different makes of cameras exposure systems have different parameters in their design it's quite possible to to have some small deviation in their responses when pointed at a Grey Card, I have noticed this myself in my cameras, but I don't find this in practice significant because in isolation each camera gives me correct exposure, and comparing light meter and thermometer readings I find is a very quick way to drive yourself crazy :)

And many of us know, from the routine use of EI 40 to expose Velvia which was rated ISO 50, that even the ISO ratings of film are rather arbitrary! So why would we be surprised to see some variability in ISO sensitivity within digital cameras, too?!

This brings us back to why I originally objected to your commentary in post 23, "so I.S.O 100 on a digital camera isn't the same as 100 I.S.O on a hand held separate light meter and film which is why the readings don't agree".

My digital camera meter matches my traditional handheld ('for film') meter! And my film camera meters don't all agree with each other, so they provide a shakey reference standard by which to judge digital camera meters, and film itself is not necessarily a perfect standard either, so film is an imperfect standard to compare against digital sensor sensitivity!

10-19-2012, 11:10 AM

E. von Hoegh

Quote:

Originally Posted by Poisson Du Jour

IGNORE what a digital camera tells you; the metering technology does not permit accurate parallels with e.g. analogue (film) use. Worse still is people relying on the histogram as an indicator of brightness range. Chuck it out, all of it, and learn metering basics first.

Best advice so far.

10-19-2012, 12:02 PM

markbarendt

Quote:

Originally Posted by wiltw

And many of us know, from the routine use of EI 40 to expose Velvia which was rated ISO 50, that even the ISO ratings of film are rather arbitrary!

We need to be careful not to confuse ISO and EI.

You and and your buddies may like Velvia at an EI of 40 but that doesn't mean the film has an ISO rating of 40.

ISO ratings are determined by where a specific density falls on the film curve in a lab under highly controlled conditions, it has nothing to do with where you or I like our exposures to fall on Velvia or any other film.

ISO film ratings are very reliable and quite standard in practice. The wild cards that affect our perception of ratings are typically related to "our" problems.

Meters, like thermometers and other gauges, need maintenance calibration to stay accurate. If I chose to get all my camera meters calibrated as well as my hand held, then they too would all agree.

My developing regime cannot match the quality control of Fuji or Ilford.

My shutters work well and are close, but perfect, no.

My sensibility bout what a shot should look like is different than yours.